#1 How is Shinra, Inc. evil? (FF7)
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 2:32 pm
I just played through Final Fantasy 7 again, paying more attention to the story this time than ever before, and after seeing the events of the game, I am left wondering how Shinra is so bad.
Throughout much the game, the protaginists and Shinra both have the same goal: stop the madman Sephiroth from destroying the planet. Shinra formulates a plan, devlops technology to carry out this plan, and then at the last minute members of the terrorist AVALANCHE group sabotage their plan, and then bitch about them being worthless.
Example: Meteor is falling on the planet. Shinra scientists figure they can use a high yield bomb to blast it apart, pushing the bulk of the mass out of harms way.
They make huge materia to use in their bomb, then take their space rocket and set it to automatically ram the meteor.
AVALANCHE decides they don't want this to happen, because the loss of a huge materia is more important to them than the loss of the entire planet, and retreive the huge materia. The rocket still does some damage to meteor, but since its payload was stolen, it fails in its task.
Back on the Highwind, a Shinra designed and built airship stolen by the terrorists, Cloud et al metions Rufus' plan failed. Of course it did! You just sabotaged it!
In the beginning, and for some time before this, Tseng and the Turks are trying to bring Aeris in for study. But he does this in a polite, nonviolent way for a long time. There are flashbacks showing Tseng asking Aeris and Elmyra to go volentarily.
Judging from the videos Professor Gast made with his information from Ifalna, the studies would probably have consisted of interviews and maybe blood samples. Madman Hojo would have probably been more invasive than that, given his attempt to mate Aeris with Red XIII, but even he did not want to see harm come to "precious specimen". And, also, Hojo did alot of his stuff with approval from higher up; Rufus mentions he "kept a lot of things to himself".
Let's look at Shinra's attempts to stop AVALANCHE early on. Well, given that AVALANCHE was setting bombs in their power plants with no regard for innocent life (Reeve says to Barrett "how mant people do you think died when No. 1 blew up?"), if I were in charge of Shinra, I would have done the same thing: stop the terrorists from causing any more damage and taking any more lives.
Dropping the plate on Sector 7 seems rather evil to me though. I can't think of a good justification for that: sure the terrorists were causing great damage and needed to be stopped, dropping that plate surely caused more damage than AVALANCHE could ever hope to incur.
Moving on to Rufus's little speech he gives about ruling with fear rather than money. Nice speech, but he didn't act that way at all when in power, so it was just empty words.
In the hunt for Sephiroth, again, Shinra does all the work, and Cloud's group takes all the credit. The Turks (who are wicked awesome btw) are hot on his tail the whole way through, with your party following them and fighting them when they try to do their jobs. On more than one occasion, the Turks voluntarily assist Cloud hunt down Sephiroth, realizing that they do have a common goal.
Shinra takes down two of the WEAPON creatures, and destroys the barrier on the North Cave. Though then, with Rufus incapacitated, asshole Heidegger and madman Hojo start doing their own thing, but luckily, another Shinra exectutive, Reeve, takes steps to control these rogues, however since he doesn't have as much power as Heidegger, he is forced to bring in Cloud to do the work. This is really the only point in the game where I see Shinra as being really bad.
What about in the past? Professor Gast never did anything that was evil. He did mistake Jenova for an ancient, but it was an honest mistake, no evil intent. The creation of Sephiroth went rather smoothly and his fall to madness was not their fault. There was no way Shinra could have forseen him going mad like he did. Before seeing Jenova in the Nibel reactor, he seemed to be a compassionate, competent man. His madness was not Shinra's fault.
The destruction and slaughter of Corel may be an evil act. We don't have enough information to say for sure; there may have been circumstances there that we don't know about. Remember the story was told by the leader of the terrorists, Barrett, and also, he was not there at the time, so he also didn't know all the facts.
Let's add up the evil acts we see:
Sector 7 plate drop. (An over-response to the terrorists)
Corel massacre. (Circumstances unknown)
And also all the bullshit about draining the Planet's life with Mako reactors - I fail to see why this is so bad. It seemed to be a rather clean, efficent process (the byproducts of the reaction we see is materia and something coming out of the top of the reactors in Midgar when turned up; could be simply cooling water, like in real power plants). Destroying the planet? Come on, in the game, we don't see any adverse effects on the planet, and the reactors have been running for years. All we have is the word of terrorists and nature freaks that it is seriously harmful. These people would probably be against nuclear power too.
So, am I missing something here? Shinra has some assholes working for them, and did a total of 2 questionable actions throughout all the years we see, and works very hard to save the planet when it is threatened by Sephiroth. What is so bad about them?
Throughout much the game, the protaginists and Shinra both have the same goal: stop the madman Sephiroth from destroying the planet. Shinra formulates a plan, devlops technology to carry out this plan, and then at the last minute members of the terrorist AVALANCHE group sabotage their plan, and then bitch about them being worthless.
Example: Meteor is falling on the planet. Shinra scientists figure they can use a high yield bomb to blast it apart, pushing the bulk of the mass out of harms way.
They make huge materia to use in their bomb, then take their space rocket and set it to automatically ram the meteor.
AVALANCHE decides they don't want this to happen, because the loss of a huge materia is more important to them than the loss of the entire planet, and retreive the huge materia. The rocket still does some damage to meteor, but since its payload was stolen, it fails in its task.
Back on the Highwind, a Shinra designed and built airship stolen by the terrorists, Cloud et al metions Rufus' plan failed. Of course it did! You just sabotaged it!
In the beginning, and for some time before this, Tseng and the Turks are trying to bring Aeris in for study. But he does this in a polite, nonviolent way for a long time. There are flashbacks showing Tseng asking Aeris and Elmyra to go volentarily.
Judging from the videos Professor Gast made with his information from Ifalna, the studies would probably have consisted of interviews and maybe blood samples. Madman Hojo would have probably been more invasive than that, given his attempt to mate Aeris with Red XIII, but even he did not want to see harm come to "precious specimen". And, also, Hojo did alot of his stuff with approval from higher up; Rufus mentions he "kept a lot of things to himself".
Let's look at Shinra's attempts to stop AVALANCHE early on. Well, given that AVALANCHE was setting bombs in their power plants with no regard for innocent life (Reeve says to Barrett "how mant people do you think died when No. 1 blew up?"), if I were in charge of Shinra, I would have done the same thing: stop the terrorists from causing any more damage and taking any more lives.
Dropping the plate on Sector 7 seems rather evil to me though. I can't think of a good justification for that: sure the terrorists were causing great damage and needed to be stopped, dropping that plate surely caused more damage than AVALANCHE could ever hope to incur.
Moving on to Rufus's little speech he gives about ruling with fear rather than money. Nice speech, but he didn't act that way at all when in power, so it was just empty words.
In the hunt for Sephiroth, again, Shinra does all the work, and Cloud's group takes all the credit. The Turks (who are wicked awesome btw) are hot on his tail the whole way through, with your party following them and fighting them when they try to do their jobs. On more than one occasion, the Turks voluntarily assist Cloud hunt down Sephiroth, realizing that they do have a common goal.
Shinra takes down two of the WEAPON creatures, and destroys the barrier on the North Cave. Though then, with Rufus incapacitated, asshole Heidegger and madman Hojo start doing their own thing, but luckily, another Shinra exectutive, Reeve, takes steps to control these rogues, however since he doesn't have as much power as Heidegger, he is forced to bring in Cloud to do the work. This is really the only point in the game where I see Shinra as being really bad.
What about in the past? Professor Gast never did anything that was evil. He did mistake Jenova for an ancient, but it was an honest mistake, no evil intent. The creation of Sephiroth went rather smoothly and his fall to madness was not their fault. There was no way Shinra could have forseen him going mad like he did. Before seeing Jenova in the Nibel reactor, he seemed to be a compassionate, competent man. His madness was not Shinra's fault.
The destruction and slaughter of Corel may be an evil act. We don't have enough information to say for sure; there may have been circumstances there that we don't know about. Remember the story was told by the leader of the terrorists, Barrett, and also, he was not there at the time, so he also didn't know all the facts.
Let's add up the evil acts we see:
Sector 7 plate drop. (An over-response to the terrorists)
Corel massacre. (Circumstances unknown)
And also all the bullshit about draining the Planet's life with Mako reactors - I fail to see why this is so bad. It seemed to be a rather clean, efficent process (the byproducts of the reaction we see is materia and something coming out of the top of the reactors in Midgar when turned up; could be simply cooling water, like in real power plants). Destroying the planet? Come on, in the game, we don't see any adverse effects on the planet, and the reactors have been running for years. All we have is the word of terrorists and nature freaks that it is seriously harmful. These people would probably be against nuclear power too.
So, am I missing something here? Shinra has some assholes working for them, and did a total of 2 questionable actions throughout all the years we see, and works very hard to save the planet when it is threatened by Sephiroth. What is so bad about them?